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by Doug Morse

In the Beginning

Well, I thought I sit down this morning with my cup of tea and tell you about the Speck ToughSkin (store link, $29.95). Due to errands and just plain procrastination, the tea is cold. Anyhow, that’s enough about the start to my day and on to the review because things are certainly looking up. The Spec ToughSkin is a two part solution. The first is a ‘ruggedized’ silicon layer that fits snuggly around your iPhone. Then there is a plastic holster attached to a belt clip. The entire iPhone case can be plunked into the holster clip on your belt. This is, in theory, a best of both worlds scenario, or as Speck puts it ‘best case’ scenario. So I’ll start with the silicon case itself.

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by Doug Morse

Well, the bad news is that I just got a letter from Sprint. Suffice to say that I’m still going to be out three hundred bucks to cancel my contract. A wrong decision a year ago is going to cost me an additional couple hundred that I didn’t need to lose. I thought about calling them to try to sort it all out, but I realized I’d waste a couple hours on the phone with their customer service when instead I could be writing this fine review and getting paid a little something for it. Then I could call it all a wash. Just a bit of warning: Sprint offered me an additional 10% discount to up my contract for two years more a while back (this was before the iPhone was on the horizon). Unfortunately, it knocked out a 5% discount I already had. Net gain 5%. I may dash off a quick letter, but I think even that may be a waste of time.

So instead of wasting my time with Sprint, let’s move on to Apple and AT&T’s wonderful iPhone and Mobi Products Protector Case (store link, $19.95). Important things first: this comes in Smoke, Clear, Red and Pink, though studying all of the pictures, all of the cases are translucent. I received the Smoke version, which to my taste is neither here nor there. That said, it does seem to be the best of the options.

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figure 1: various logos of CTIA. It’s probably supposed to show multi-facetedness and diversity, but it’s a lot more like untreated schizophrenia.

There is something seriously wrong with the wireless industry. The CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment is emblematic of the issues that plague the wireless industry. It’s seriously like a microcosm of what’s broken in the wireless world.

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Shocking you with a day early this time instead of a day late. For podcast 7 we talk about CTIAthe iPhone on Orange, possible unlock rumors, a product red version possibly coming, an SDK in february plus some widget speculation, some leopard speculation, webapps, and a brief hacking segment. And then, a bit on the iTunes plus price cut, Greenpeace, new Apple ads, and att.com making changes. And of course the usual chat about the community.

No less chock full of stuff than last week, but I managed to shave off a few minutes and keep us under 50 minutes. How did I do it? By shaving off the talks about Apple vs. gateway / acer / packard bell. Sharp listeners, look for the “I’m going to cut this” and Dieter being sad. I’ll post it up later today.

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It’s an even bigger podcast than last week, coming in at almost an hour. We talk about some of the ins and outs of the new firmware, the danger to unlockers, rumors of iPhones abroad in Canada and France, the recent rumors of 2nd party apps, widgets and human interface guidelines, and of course the hacked apps. Then, we talk about Jobs and his reality distortion field, and some of the Apple lawsuits out there. And of course, the community gets the final words.

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There are some reports that some folks are finding that the 1.1.1 firmware update for the iPhone has been pulled from Apple, and that the most recent version of iTunes is now reporting 1.0.2 as the most recent version. And if they haven’t, maybe they should.

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Ars Technica has sources that indicate that Apple is prepping Mobile Safari to run applications and web pages offline. You know, widgets. These widgets will use the same technologies as the AJAX web apps that are out there now — HTML, CSS, asynchronous Javascript and XML, cookies, etc., but with the added bonus of a little extra local storage. Maybe some javascript functions that allow you to access the actual API of the phone for contact / calendar integration and the like will make it as well.

figure 1: the Widget manager from OSX 10.4. The iPhone has been destined for widgets. Note the similarity of this on the iPhone (figure 2)

figure 2: The bottom bar on the iPhone. Note the similarity. I do not think the similarity is accidental. Why would the iPod Touch have a different bottom bar?

Apple is working on a Google Gears-like system to cache online applications for use in mode, or other situations where the network is not available. Their expected timeline for announcing or delivering this is January. In case you’re new to the Apple world, January is code for Macworld Expo, the same Expo in which Jobs announced the iPhone.

Lastly, their source indicated that Apple is not currently working on a native SDK for release to the general public, and that AJAX Web apps are going to be the way to go. Ars Technica’s Apple source has expressed some frustration in that:

“You can’t write [bleep]ing [bleep] in that…. Jobs is a control freak and doesn’t want people messing with perfection.”

He’s not alone in his frustration. You can practically read the spittle over at gizmodo. Jesus Diaz is so pissed he’s replaced every outbound link in his article with another link that links back to Gizmodo. Macworld.co.uk meanwhile is confusing Javascript with Java. There won’t be Java on the iPhone. Jobs confirmed that maybe a day after he announced the iPhone in January.

Speaking personally, I know that it’s not the same as having native applications. But, I am glad that there will finally be some mechanism for apps beyond the data URL trick and bookmarklets. I’ve long said that I expect some sort of 3rd party app, whether it be widgets or native. Frankly, I’d much prefer native, and that’s part of the reason that I’ll likely never update my hacked 4GB iPhone (I need it for screenshots and the like), but widgets can do a lot of what many, if not most, people want, and I eagerly look forward to that on the 8GB iPhone.

by Doug Morse

My iPhone came well in advance of the computer. So for nearly ten days, I had an attractive looking paperweight. Meanwhile, a box full of accessories went to a different address — I was on vacation you see — so I couldn’t do much except stare at the iPhone box. Finally, I figured I would activate the iPhone on a different computer – though there is a danger to this madness. When I finally synched it to my home computer, I’d essentially be ‘wiping’ the iPhone and starting anew. Still, I had a working iPhone for a couple of days before the device and accessories were united.

Like a giddy young girl headed to the prom, my iPhone looked at the box of accessories. Cases, screen protectors, sync and charge cables, even a fancy Motorola Bluetooth headset were ready to take her out. The question of course: what to wear. Well, the one screen protector was a no-brainer. No one wants to get damaged on a night out. The sync and charge cable was a simple retracting affair. No, it was the cases that posed the most difficulty. There were three soft rubberized cases in pink, brown (yuck), and blue. Two semi hard cases, and a Tough Skin Sport by Speck. And the prettiest of the lot was an executive deep red leather case. For whatever reason, I was attracted to the light blue bad-boy-sounding Marware Sport Grip (store link, $14.95).

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figure 1:Apple’s 1.1.1 update is out, and it clocks in at 152.3 MB

Apple released their long-promised 1.1.1 update to the iPhone, and it looks like the update is “all clear” for anyone that has not hacked their iPhone. They also posted another training video to go with the update, starring the same fellow from Apple’s earlier training videos (see here, here, and a creepy but funny mashup here).

I received an email from Wireless Imports in which they advise unlockers wait to apply the update:

We have just received confirmation that it is NOT safe for anyone to update their iPhones software at this time. If you do upgrade the software you will have your phone relocked back to AT&T and there is nothing currently we will be able to do to assist in re-unlocking your phone.

At this time we do not know if you will be able to use your AT&T sim card with the phone even though it is locked back to AT&T.

Again we ask that you DO NOT upgrade to the new software under any circumstance.

We will send you another email when we have more information on this matter.

If you unlocked via AnySIM or the terminal unlock methods, it’s probably also not a good idea to update the iPhone. If you’ve unlocked your iPhone, it is probably best to wait to apply this update.

Unsurprisingly, if you’ve hacked your iPhone, Apple has broken 3rd party applications and re-locks iPhones that were previously unlocked. Applications that were installed on the iPhone remain on the iPhone, although there isn’t a way to launch those applications until hackers jailbreak the iPhone again.

Unfortunately, Apple’s language in the patch update indicates their willingness to dump the warranty on anyone that’s unlocked their iPhone and thereby saw it bricked with this update. If you hack your iPhone in the future, you will want to get used to waiting a few days or more past an update to see how the update could affect you. Let someone else be the hero.

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A bit of friendly advice — if you’ve unlocked your iPhone, you should be careful with the next firmware update — don’t apply it immediately. Check with news sites and forums to see if the update works fine with unlocks first. Apple released a press release that noted that the current methods of unlock can cause “irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software.” And as such, they’re going to void the warranty of anyone that unlocks their phone, and they’ll mark your phone as ineligible for warranty service. There are some reports of people that have been “blacklisted.” There’s a full rundown of this story after the cut.

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